


prompt: out of love

by kittymills



Series: Sheith Snippets [7]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Out of love, kiss prompt, s7, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 17:09:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15711627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittymills/pseuds/kittymills
Summary: Kiss prompt for mizukisenpai on tumblr





	prompt: out of love

**Author's Note:**

> set in s7 canonverse

> _[Kiss prompt:](http://flashedarrow.tumblr.com/post/177007015653/send-me-a-ship-and-a-number-and-i-will-write-a) **…out of love** _
> 
>  
> 
>  

Keith finds him in the early hours before the dawn on the roof of the garrison.

“Hey,” he says quietly. “What are you doing out here?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Shiro answers. He stares up, his gaze traversing the dull orange glow of the particle barrier that domes above their heads.Once they used to sit out here and look up at the stars and dream and talk and laugh. Now there was no laughter, no dreams, just menacing stripes of black in orbit that blocked the stars.

“Iverson told me about Adam. I’m sorry, Shiro. I know what he meant to you.”

It takes him a moment to answer. “It was a long time ago,” Shiro says. It still hurts, the last words they exchanged together, the final snap that set them on different parts, but the pain is muted now. Dull around the edges and faded, nothing much more than a sad regret left in its place.

“Still,” Keith lifts a shoulder in half a shrug. “You loved him.”

Shiro doesn’t answer. He must have, once. But the memory of it is too far away for him to reach. It makes him sad inside, a scrape along the edge of his ribs. Adam deserved better, he’s sure of it.

His eyes focus on the barrier overhead, humming in the night but he doesn’t really see it. He’s thinking of something else. Someone else.

_I love you._

It had been those words that had jolted him (the clone? it was hard to tell them apart sometimes) into something else that Haggar couldn’t entirely control. The memory still echoes in this body, the sound of those words in Keith’s rough voice rattling around in his brain until he found himself watching Keith from a distance, wondering what it meant, what it could mean.

And what it couldn’t.

Was it just the clone that was in love with Keith? Or was it always inside him, just brutally shoved down so deep that nothing could ever come of it.

The latter, he suspects.

The latter, he _fears._

He walked away from Adam too easily, too intent on pursuing a dream. Then the galra came and Voltron, and through it all, Keith followed him. Keith pulled him out of the dark. Keith brought him back to life.

Adam was gone, but Keith endured.

He rubs his temple, a thumb and fingers smoothing over his skin. Sometimes it didn’t feel like a new body, sometimes he forgot this wasn’t really his, that he died. Sometimes he looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize the person staring back at him.

But he always recognized Keith. Even when he returned, older and wiser, with an inner peace Shiro had never seen him wear before Shiro still recognized him.

_We saved each other._

And now he recognises the quiet murmur of his heart for what it is and it grows loud, so loud he can no longer keep it contained within. He has a second chance. Maybe, for all his trauma, for all their fight, this was his thanks.

His gaze shifts, from the glow above to the glow beside him. No less bright but a hundred times more subtle. Once it had been only him that could see it, but then Keith had returned after two years in the quantum abyss and now everyone could.

He can’t help but feel proud about that.

“Keith,” he says, a name he’s uttered a hundred times before, but never quite like this. Keith seems to recognize it too, and his head turns. Dark eyes glitter with a promise Shiro still struggles to let himself believe in. “I love you, too.”

Keith shifts on his heels, slow and measured. His hand reaches for Shiro, new callouses pressing into his palm. His hair is longer now, brushing past his shoulders, dark against the orange of his uniform but it’s his smile that captures Shiro’s attention. Small and quiet and serene.  

“I know,” Keith tells him and he tugs, drawing Shiro down as he lifts up and their lips meet, a gentle slide against each other, sweet like sugar but tempered in the knowledge that this is all they can have.

At least for now.


End file.
